BFI Screenonline: Budgie (1971-72) Originally entitled 'The Loser', this comedy-drama by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall charts the failures of Ronald 'Budgie' Bird, a small-time crook who usually ends up as the fall guy for Soho villain Charlie Endell (a larger-than-life performance from Iain Cuthbertson). Budgie is estranged from his wife Jean (a scintillatingly brittle Georgina Hale ) and has a wary if basically friendly relationship with his girlfriend Hazel, the mother of his child. Although in early episodes Adam Faith 's limited acting experience occasionally shows, he quickly gained in confidence, and by the darker second series he has clearly grown as a performer, most noticeably in his scenes with Hale, which turn from violence to humour in a second and crackle with sexual chemistry. Despite the comic escapades in most stories, what makes the series so memorable is its air of melancholic regret. Budgie is an arrested adolescent, his get-rich-quick schemes just evanescent dreams, ploys to stave off adult responsibilities.

Among the most memorable sequences are the duologues between Budgie and a succession of parental surrogates, in which they jointly confront the disappointments in the lives. Notable examples include a prostitute recalling the son she gave up for adoption in 'Some Mother's Sons' (tx. 16/4/1971); a schoolteacher with a secret craving for pornography in 'Could Do Better' (tx. 14/5/1971); a faded alcoholic actress with suicidal tendencies in 'Sunset Mansions or Whatever Happened to Janey Baib?' (tx. 25/6/1971); and virtually an entire cast of disillusioned characters staying at the eponymous 'Grandee Hotel' (tx. 30/4/1971). For all his ebullience and his success with women, Budgie always remains an outsider looking in; when we meet his parents, the story predictably ends with his being shut out of the family unit.

The second series concludes in a spectacularly bitter fashion: Budgie, beaten to a pulp by Endell and his men and left destitute on the streets of London, is turned away by his wife and family, while he in turn abandons Hazel, now pregnant with their second child. A third series and even a feature film version were mooted but came to nothing, though Faith did reprise his role in a musical adaptation by Waterhouse and Hall that had a brief West End run in 1988. None of the trio, however, had any involvement in Charles Endell Esquire (ITV, 1979), a shortlived spin-off set in Glasgow starring Cuthbertson. Sergio Angelini Budgie (TV Series 1971–1972) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Chirpy Cockney petty crook 'Budgie' Bird is the main character in this British TV series of the early 70s.

Budgie was the eternal failure, with every scam, and every attempt to make his ... See full summary » Creators: a list of 981 titles created 24 Sep 2012 a list of 378 titles created 25 Mar 2015 a list of 1054 titles created 22 Oct 2015 a list of 990 titles created 27 Nov 2015 a list of 195 titles created 2 months ago Search for " Budgie " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Edit Storyline Chirpy Cockney petty crook 'Budgie' Bird is the main character in this British TV series of the early 70s. Budgie was the eternal failure, with every scam, and every attempt to make his fortune landing him further and further into trouble, either with the police, or with his untrustworthy sometime boss, the cynical Charlie Endell, a respectable club owner on the surface, and underworld villain below it.

All attempts to put Budgie on the 'straight and narrow' by his girlfriend and awful ex-wife were in vain, and with an unflappable optimism, he bounced in and out of prison on a regular basis as the series progressed. Written by D.Giddings <darren.giddings@newcastle.ac.uk> 9 April 1971 (UK) See more » Also Known As: Did You Know? Trivia Due to a union action by TV technicians, some early episodes were made in black and white as a protest over pay. See more » Crazy Credits In the opening titles, the wording "Budgie", "Starring Adam Faith" and "And Iain Cuthbertson" is made up of piles of pound notes arranged on the ground into the shape of the lettering. These notes come from a briefcase which Budgie steals from a car and which he then drops, causing the banknotes to spill out. See more » Connections (middlesbrough, UK) – See all my reviews Budgie (or 'The Loser', as it was originally intended to be called) was a big hit with audiences back in 1971/2.

It gave 60's songster Adam Faith, another chance at stardom, and led him on an interesting career as an actor. The show highlighted a certain (jailbird/chancer/petty thief/lovable rogue) Ronald 'Budgie' Bird, and his frequent (yet never successful) attempts to make 'easy' money. His futile attempts are also thwarted, due to his connection with Glasweigan sex shop owner/crime boss Charlie Endell (played brilliantly by Iain Cuthbertson) who constantly hangs over Budgie, depriving him of any earnings, and always coming out on top. His henchman, Laughing Spam Fritter (great name) is also menacingly portrayed by John Rhys-Davies. Given Endells questionable background, yet his (seemingly) respectable 'public' facade, the series has a lot to say about class system (or at very least, the idea of a class system) than it does about petty crime in the seventies.

Budgie is not without redeeming features, and the one good thing in his life, is (his ever put upon girl-fiend/mother of his child) Hazell (another great down to earth performance by Lynne Dalby.) She constantly stands by her man (even when he seemingly leaves her for other women) yet receives little or no thanks for her endeavours.

The show (in it's 26 episode run, in 2 series) covers a lot of ground, and also features some great guest cameos (including: John Thaw, Gordon Jackson, Derek Jacobi and James Bolam, to name but a few) Some (if not most) times this show has a certain comedic flow to it, yet other times, it takes on a darker sinister edge (mostly due to the sometime psychotic rages of Charlie Endell) but all in all, it's not only a great seventies time capsule, but (still to this very day) a highly moving and involving television show, that was long overdue a repeat in the UK (it's last and only repeat, being on Channel 4 circa 1985) but it seems the great minds at Network DVD have put together a excellent release of series 1 & 2 (Series two, also has some great special features) Highlights from series one are: Out, Grandee Hotel, Everybody Loves A Baby, Sunset Mansions.

Highlights from series two are: And The Lord Taketh Away, Do Me A Favour, Twenty-Four Thousand Ball Point Pens, King For A day, Brief Encounter, Run Rabbit, Run Rabbit, Run, Run, Run All in all, a great series. Hopefully Network DVD can release the rarely seen 1979 spin off 'Charlie Endell Esq' in the near future? 10 out of 10 (and surprisingly, the first comment, on this great show) 22 of 22 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes The Lad and the Loser: Budgie (1971-72) – British Television Drama The Lad and the Loser: Budgie (1971-72) BY NIGEL SARRASSA-DYER Twenty-six episodes.

Writers: Keith Waterhouse, Willis Hall, Douglas Livingstone, Jack Trevor Story; Producer: Verity Lambert; Directors: Moira Armstrong, Alan Gibson, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Mike Newell, Herbert Wise Budgie, the story of small time Soho criminal Ronald ‘Budgie’ Bird, was produced by London Weekend Television and ran over two series, each of thirteen episodes, between 1971 and 1972. 1 Both series explored the liminal world of pornography, police corruption, criminal scams, violence and petty crime, and Budgie’s place within it. While Budgie has come to be affectionately remembered as a cockney comedy-drama with a charming, irrepressible lead character set in 1970s Soho, and as a series which launched an ‘entire fashion craze’, and is indeed all of these things, it would do the series a huge disservice to ignore its other dimensions, in particular those concerned with gender and masculinity identity. 2 As social, economic and cultural changes of the 1970s impacted upon gender relations, a significant number of programmes were able to explore multiple and competing constructions of masculinity.

Issues around gender and masculine anxieties featured across a variety of television genres: routinely in sitcoms such as Rising Damp and Man about the House; 3 as small parts of wider discourses in dramas like The Knowledge and Comedians ; 4 and in both the documentary The Family and the science fiction series Survivors. 5 With Budgie, however, it is the detailed examination of a particular masculinity at a particular time which is central to the narrative as it is played out in the trajectory of Budgie’s decline and fall. The series was devised and largely written by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, who had achieved considerable success the previous decade. Echoes of Budgie can be found in some of Waterhouse’s earlier writing. For example, William Fisher in the 1959 novel Billy Liar (later adapted for theatre and cinema by Waterhouse and Hall) is, like Budgie, a dreamer and a fantasist.

Similarly Waterhouse and Hall’s script for the 1963 film West 11 6 depicts a particular milieu in London (in this case Notting Hill rather than Soho) in a decade (the 1960s rather than the 1970s) which is part ‘seedy’, part swinging, part ‘sleazy’ and peopled by richly idiosyncratic characters. 7 Even Alfred Lynch’s central character Joe Beckett, while more intelligent and aware than Budgie, bears a striking resemblance to him as a somewhat confused outsider on the fringes of the criminal underworld. Some of Waterhouse’s later work also has echoes of Budgie. His novel Soho, for example, is set in the district that he knew and loved and was on the verge of disappearing. Similarly his script for the play Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell operates, in part, as an elegy or paean for a particular time and place displaying his love for and knowledge of that part of London, something which is no less apparent in Budgie. Budgie was notable for the involvement of producer Verity Lambert, following her considerable success with Doctor Who and preceding her groundbreaking achievements with Euston Films.

8 A number of distinguished directors were also involved in the production including Jim Goddard who would go on to direct Out, Fox and The Black Stuff; 9 Michael Lindsay-Hogg, whose later work would include several episodes of Play for Today , Brideshead Revisited and Bill Brand); 10 Mike Newell, who had been building a reputation for himself with crime dramas Spindoe and Big Breadwinner Hog and whose later work would take him to Hollywood; 11 and BAFTA-winning Moira Armstrong, whose career as one of television’s most prolific directors of popular drama, spanning fifty years, would include the acclaimed series Testament of Youth. 12 Budgie starred pop singer Adam Faith, who had already made successful forays into acting in a number of British films. Faith’s personification of Budgie, which became enormously popular with a young male working class audience, is perhaps one of the best fictional examples of what came to be known as The Lad.

13 Variously described by Robert Elms as ‘a guttersnipe peacock’, ‘Jack the Lad’ and ‘a cheeky, money hungry, street savvy working class guy, obsessed with wearing the right schmutter’, Budgie Bird was able to encapsulate the aspirations of a large and significant section of working class youth. 14 In this sense he personifies what Caughie and Rockett have called the crafty working-class lothario. 15 Being highly aware of his own image and style, confident as an individual and not necessarily operating as part of a homosocial male group, but still holding an unreconstructed attitude towards women, he is perhaps more likely to be seen in the company of women than other men. However, he is less interested in the women than he is in himself. Furthermore, unusually for the time, whilst being resolutely heterosexual Budgie eschews any form of homophobia. Unlike other characters in the series he is neither abashed nor appears threatened when confronted with openly camp men or evidence of same sex liaisons. In the early 70s advertisers made a concerted effort to target male consumers, resulting in the emergence of a new language.

Whilst traditional masculine products such as beer and tobacco were marketed more aggressively, new more ‘feminine’ products like aftershave also entered into advertising. Leon Hunt sees here the emergence of The Lad, a generally younger man, part pop star, part footballer, willing to incorporate elements of femininity into his lifestyle. 16 The Lad is resolutely heterosexual but is open to new ideas, styles and fashions. His version of masculinity is fluid but can also be awkward, comic and somewhat vulnerable. 17 What he also contributes is a distinctly accessible role model for working class youth and a break with models of traditional working class masculinity, although whether this is a genuine challenge to the dominant paradigms of hegemonic masculinity is debatable. 18 While working-class men’s interest in designer clothes was a reflection of masculinity that had ‘partly detached itself from its formative links to traditional class identities’, becoming ‘aspirational and more narcissistic’, Budgie was far from the upper-middle-class fantasies of Jason King and The Persuaders, 19 its central character owing more to the legacy of dandyism which emerged in working-class personalities like Terence Stamp in the 1960s.

20 If, as Robert Shail has argued, figures like Stamp and Michael Caine personified a particular form of metropolitan working class masculinity and they themselves constituted a considerable part of the new meritocracy of the sixties, then Budgie could be seen as the 1970s corollary to this phenomenon. 21 With his optimistic approach to life he comes over like a 1960s anachronism, the working class dandy. His look certainly suggests success and affluence with his feathered haircut, flamboyant Carnaby Street suits, tight fitted suede jackets, satin trousers and white clogs. However, the reality of his situation more accurately reflects the ostensible disillusion of the 1970s. His milieux are not galleries, exclusive clubs or chic discothèques, but strip clubs, gambling dens and dirty bookshops. His escorts are not fashion models and actresses but strippers and check out girls, and the closest he gets to position and status is as the errand boy for a much more successful and socially aspirational working class villain. He is a character who finds every available opportunity for success thwarted as he finds it increasingly impossible to transcend his roots and his place in society.

If, as Shail asserts, ‘the exuberance which marked the working-class emancipations of the early 1960s’ led to a dandified, meritocracy in certain circles, then from the ‘besieged mentality’ of the 1970s emerged a masculinity, based upon this meritocracy but without many of the concomitant attributes. 22 The best Budgie can do is look the part. While on the surface Budgie appears to epitomise The Lad, a working class consumer, confident, stylish and irrepressible, the narratives of both series tend to undercut this image, while providing a space for a deeper exploration of Budgie’s own masculine frailty. Despite operating on the fringes of Soho’s criminal world, participating in numerous scams, continually trying to get one over on other characters, it is Budgie himself who is more often, ironically, portrayed as the victim. While he is never violent himself, he is, at times, on the receiving end of violence. While being relatively insensitive to the feelings of Hazel, his girlfriend, and some of his associates he does at other times display a deeply moving sensitivity to others.

In an encounter with his former teacher in ‘Could do Better’, he spends much of the episode listening to the man recount his lonely life since his wife left him. 23 In ‘Twenty-Four Thousand Ball Point Pens’ he has serious doubts about participating in a scam which would leave an elderly woman out of pocket. 24 Even more poignantly in ‘Sunset Mansions, or Whatever Happened to Janey Baib?’ he forms a genuine and affectionate relationship with a somewhat proud but deluded middle aged actress, attempting to comfort her and shield her from the reality of her faded career. 25 It is however in the rejection and abuse that he receives at the hands of Charlie Endell, his sometime boss, where his vulnerability reveals itself in a mixture of hurt and bewilderment. Budgie looks to Endell as a mentor, someone to nurture him. He wants to be taken seriously by Endell both professionally and personally; Endell, however, sees Budgie as no more than a minion, and certainly does not want him involved with his own private life or his family.

He constantly ridicules Budgie’s attempts to be a real villain, berates him for not understanding the complexities of business, threatens him if Budgie’s actions might lead to Endell’s own wife becoming upset. It is Endell who finally arranges for Budgie to be tracked down and badly beaten for his transgressions. In the final episode of the second series, Budgie ultimately realises the reality of a masculine hierarchy which positions himself at the bottom and Endell at the top. ‘It ain’t a free country, only for the biggest’, he cries. This is followed by a highly symbolic scene in the grounds of a ruined church, accompanied by the sound of church bells, a low angle shot of Endell, silhouetted against the ruins, looming over a quailing Budgie pleading against his punishment. 26 While Budgie appears to see Endell as some kind of surrogate father figure, Endell does not treat Budgie like a son. Why Budgie has turned to Endell to fulfil this role becomes clear in the two-part story ‘Fiddler on the Hoof’, where his real father is revealed as dissolute, uncaring and highly critical of his son to the point of antagonism.

27 In a later episode Budgie’s father fails to inform Budgie of his mother’s death. The most moving scene however, which underscores Budgie’s own vulnerable sensitivity and the lack of sensitivity that others have for him, is when his family and friends gather together to celebrate his sister’s wedding and his errant father turns up only to rant and rail once again against his son. When the family are forced to choose who stays at the party and who goes, it is Budgie who is asked to leave. Budgie expresses a disjuncture between male identities founded upon the mythic and reality, between men’s expectations and experiences, and it is indeed the theme music which frequently highlights this. The lyrics used for the second series operate as a litany of maudlin self pity: ‘I’m nobody’s fool and I’m nobody’s friend’. This elegy continues with the line ‘nobody notices me’, reflecting the eponymous protagonist’s inability to engender any heroic qualities to elevate his endeavours to mythic status. For Budgie there is no possibility of (to use Jefferson’s terms) ‘transcendence’ from the ‘mundane’.

28 Indeed the overall narrative trajectory of Budgie’s story, as well as for each individual episode, serves to play out this impossibility. Thus, rather than establish any mythic or heroic status for Budgie, the narrative(s) resolve themselves in a sense of melancholia. Jonathan Rutherford has talked about the broken promises of patriarchy where men invest the meanings of themselves in the structures and images of male superiority. That is where the promise of patriarchy is supposed to lie, in dreams of fame, greatness and of being someone. Yet these dreams rarely bear fruition. The reality of class and racial hierarchies ensure that the majority of men wait for a payoff that rarely comes. What ensues is the ‘bitterness and disappointments of men let down by the broken promises of patriarchy’, the intangible goals of masculinity that never materialise, ‘yet he still feels at home in his sexual identity rather than make any attempt to change it’. 29 As Roger Horrocks has observed, ‘patriarchal society has demanded and constructed a fearsome male narcissism’.

30 Ultimately, as Budgie’s attempts to achieve mythic status constantly elude him his geniality and the optimism, apparent in the first series, begin to evaporate and the bitterness and disappointment that Rutherford describes become increasingly manifest. While Budgie conforms to Hunt’s definition of the 70s working class ‘Lad’, confidently embracing the ostensibly ‘feminine’ through clothing, style and consumption while retaining many of the characteristics of the dominant paradigms of masculinity, his real persona is far more complex. 31 With its melancholic theme music used for the first series, plaintively-voiced lyrics for the second series, and narratives which emphasise rejection and failure, Budgie reveals its namesake to be far more than a mere signifier for youthful masculine confidence in the 1970s. Budgie himself is lonely and confused, confronted by his own inability to achieve, to become the equivalent of pop star or footballer. More than this, his own apparently confident masculinity becomes increasingly vulnerable, bringing him at times close to tears in a state of bewilderment at the treatment he receives from those he cares for. Ultimately, Budgie is revealed to be equally The Lad and The Loser.

32 While Budgie is the recipient and beneficiary of a wave of trickling down of 1960s permissiveness together with a more relaxed attitude towards gender differences, he continually resorts to manoeuvres which owe more to the power/gender relations of a previous generation. 33 Indeed while the age appeared to be permissive, this permission appears to have been granted almost exclusively to men. While Budgie exemplifies this permissive populism this is still purely a male domain. Power and gender relations remain the same. Men are still in charge; patriarchy still exists, men still exercise power both inside and outside mainstream culture. Consequently those men with little power within the masculine hierarchy, like Budgie, attempt to exercise power at moments of conspicuous success – affirming their masculinity through clothes and money or at all other times through casual misogyny. Thus, the notion of The Lad as a new construction of masculinity is both meretricious and superficial – the only thing new about him is his style. While Budgie’s masculine performance ostensibly betrays a degree of fluidity the reality becomes increasingly apparent as his aspirations are thwarted. In the first series Budgie is at times charming, sensitive, charismatic and appealingly irrepressible.

His style and appeal allows one to overlook his shortcomings. Furthermore the fact that he is a loser allows for a sense of sympathy (at his plight). However, in the second series this idea is turned on its head. His irrepressible nature – having ‘stood for it’ once again – can only be seen as stupidity. And his actions and attitudes, largely through repetition but also through making them increasingly extreme, make the character far less appealing. In ‘Glory of Fulham’, for example, as success once again eludes him, he becomes more bitter and misogynistic. 34 With his jibes about ’women’s lib’ (an echo of Bob Hope’s tirade at Miss World 1970), his exploitation of others, particularly Hazel, becomes more cynical. As he becomes more anxious and his always precarious masculine privilege becomes ever more insecure, his actions are revealed as increasingly pitiful, his behaviour problematic and no longer amusing. As people become less tolerant of him he attempts to assert himself, less through charm and more through direct challenge and confrontation.

As his protracted domestic squabbles with Hazel become increasingly bitter, he states that their young son is ‘your lousy kid’, complains that the child’s crying has woken up his racing greyhound (his latest doomed venture) and threatens violence against Hazel. Even his sexual allure begins to evaporate as he becomes sleazier, his lasciviousness becoming almost predatory. Gradually through the last three episodes, comedy turns to tragedy. This is not simply the tragedy of his own position but also the tragedy he brings upon others (again particularly Hazel) through his thoughtlessness and selfishness. In spite of its comic moments, the mood of the series has darkened considerably. Ultimately, while Budgie has come to be fondly remembered as a light drama, with comedic moments, depicting a likeable character’s laddish behaviour and a fixation on clothes, set in a fictional depiction of a lost Soho and its 70s criminal world, it is much more than this. 35 It is a complex examination of working class masculinity through a relatively simple and naïve male character.

However, while it opens up interesting discourses around a particular emergent masculinity, any genuine fluidity or transcendence is heavily circumscribed throughout the narrative leaving Budgie trapped within the existing/persisting class structures, the dominant constructions of masculinity and the limits of his own cognitive abilities. While the series may have constituted part of a shift in representations of masculinity, it was less than a radical challenge to the privileges of patriarchy. While it shows increasing tolerance to non-normative behaviour it nevertheless retains strong elements of misogyny at moments of crisis reverting to residual constructions of masculinity. As Budgie’s desperation becomes more palpable, so his mood degenerates into dark self pity. This has become, ultimately, masculinity at the end of its tether, as he declares in the final scene, ‘You can’t win, this thing’s bigger than the both of us. It’s the whole bleedin’ system’. Images of Moira Armstrong and Verity Lambert are taken from the documentary Budgie’s Birds, which is on the Network DVD release of Budgie. Originally posted: 17 February 2016.

class=”statcounter”> Iain Cuthbertson | Scottish actor | Obituary | Television & radio | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close The Scottish actor Iain Cuthbertson, who has died aged 79, achieved national prominence on television as the slippery Charlie Endell in the ITV comedy crime-drama Budgie (1971-72), and, on the other side of the law, in the title role in the BBC drama series Sutherland's Law, playing a procurator fiscal in a small Scottish town (1973-76). Cuthbertson stood 6ft 4in and was as imposing in voice as in appearance. As the gangster Endell, he revealed a wry edge to his villainy; there was a certain twinkle in the eye, under the high forehead and compressed mouth. Born in Glasgow, the son of David Cuthbertson, a leading biochemist, he went to school at Glasgow academy and Aberdeen grammar and read modern languages at Aberdeen University. Much later, he served as its rector, from 1975 to 1978.

After national service as an officer in the Black Watch, he began acting and became a regular at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre , where he impressed as Othello (1959) and as Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). He returned to the theatre as general manager from 1962 to 1965. Later, he was associate director at the Royal Court in London, directing the comedian Max Wall in a 1966 production of Alfred Jarry's absurdist play Ubu Roi. He also worked for BBC radio as a reporter. In the 1980s, a press advertisement for Scotch whisky contrasted a picture of the young Cuthbertson standing at a microphone with his present-day self, under the strapline "improved with age". His first television appearance was in a BBC programme about holidaying in the Scottish resort of Dunoon, Argyll, presented by Franklin Engelmann. "I can't say that I prefer the stage," Cuthbertson once said.

"I find television very stimulating and far less tying down in terms of time." For the producer Peter Graham Scott, he played a conniving, 18th-century laird in The Borderers (1968-70). The BBC2 series was conceived with the (ultimately unsuccessful) hope of selling it to America, and its cast included the then unknown Michael Gambon. He then took on the role of Endell, a Scottish crime boss muscling in on London's Soho, and the employer of the luckless Budgie Bird, played by Adam Faith. Cuthbertson relished his character's sly ruthlessness as well as the scripts by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall. Arguably, Endell was a truer reflection of such a type than Arthur Daley in Minder, in which Cuthbertson guested in 1989. He reprised the role in Scottish TV's Charles Endell Esquire (1979), his character now out of jail and aiming to be Glasgow's crime lord, but despite heavy promotion, it ran for only one series.

Cuthbertson was a chief constable in Scotch on the Rocks (BBC, 1973), a five-part thriller dealing with nationalism and the prospect of Scotland becoming a world power, adapted from the novel by Douglas Hurd and Andrew Osmond. In Sutherland's Law, he starred as the public prosecutor John Sutherland, undertaking investigations into criminal cases in a rural community on the west coast of Scotland. The series made much use of locations in Oban, Argyll, and brought him a Radio Industries Club of Scotland award for television personality of 1973. To the surprise and delight of Michael Palin, Cuthbertson accepted a role in an episode of Palin's and Terry Jones's Ripping Yarns (1977), parodying a pre-war murder investigation. He would also enjoy some self-spoofing as Scunner Campbell in the children's ITV comedy SuperGran (1985-87), contributing the line "is there nothing she cannae do?" to Billy Connolly's theme song.

His plays for television included David Edgar's political drama Destiny (BBC, 1978) and two excursions into the supernatural, Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape (BBC, 1972), and MR James's Casting the Runes (ITV, 1979). Twice he was a fearsome headmaster, in Tom Brown's Schooldays (BBC, 1971) and Vice Versa (ATV, 1981). Films included the classic screen adaption of E Nesbit's The Railway Children (1970), with Cuthbertson playing the children's father, finally freed and reunited with his family after being wrongly imprisoned for espionage. He also appeared in Gorillas in the Mist (1988), starring Sigourney Weaver, and in Scandal (1989), portraying Lord Hailsham. Cuthbertson suffered a stroke in 1982. One of his first jobs after he recovered was as dialogue coach to a multinational cast in Graham Scott's version of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae (1984), starring John Gielgud.

Guest appearances, often as enjoyable heavies, included The Avengers, The Onedin Line and Inspector Morse. Cuthbertson's marriage to the actor Anne Kristen ended in 1988 (she died in 1996). His second wife, Janet, survives him. • Iain Cuthbertson, actor, born 4 January 1930; died 4 September 2009 ITV London - London Weekend Television (TV ARK ON LINE MUSEUM) LWT Drama Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime 1983 Based on Agatha Christie's short stories, this charming but effete series brings to life the exploits of newlyweds Prudence and Tommy Beresford, (Francesca Annis and James Warwick) who set up a private detective agency in London. Together they tackle everything from stolen jewels to poltergeists and, in this episode (30/10/1983), poisoned chocolates... The second clip dates from 1983; a promo for the series theme tune available on a 45rpm single, voiced by LWT announcer Ruth Anders.

Bouquet of Barbed Wire 1976 TV discovered incest through Andrea Newman's 1976 drama - 'a modern Greek tragedy' to critics. Frank Finlay played Peter Manson, a wealthy publisher living in Surrey, stricken with jealous passion when his daughter Prue (Susan Penhaligon) married a sexy young American (James Aubrey). A similarly sex-drenched sequel, "Another Bouquet", followed in 1977. Budgie 1971 The 26-part Budgie was made initially in b/w, the result of the 1971 colour strike which also ensured that the earliest episodes of Upstairs Downstairs were recorded in monochrome. This titles clip is from a colour episode (28/05/1971) and what a memorable sequence it is, showing the eponymous hero (Adam Faith) grasping desperately for cash only for it to be blown away or slip through his fingers. Budgie's writers were Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, creating the chirpy cockney straight out of jail who could never seem to do anything right.

Charlie Endell (Iain Cuthbertson), a tough wheeler dealer, pressganged Budgie into doing all his dirty work for him. The clip includes a 1989 continuity announcement from LWT's 21st birthday weekend. Dempsey and Makepeace 1984 (Pilot) Watching the titles of this 90 minute pilot special, Armed & Extremely Dangerous, you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching a dodgy Michael Winner re-make of Farewell My Lovely.. Dempsey and Makepeace 1985 The pilot proved a hit, and lead to three popular series, of which these are the titles of series one. The music is fast-paced but the speed of picture cutting seem quite as quick as it ought to be, yet the logo graphics have a real swish about them. Michael Brandon and Glynis Barber starred, respectively, as a brash New York police lieutenant paired with a blonde English detective, blessed with a Cambridge degree and a titled daddy. Welsh charatcer actor Ray Smith played their work-worn guv'nor Spikings.

Enemy at the Door 1978 Some have opined that this series, about the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands in World War II, was ITV's answer to the hit BBC series Secret Army and Colditz. It starred Alfred Burke as Major Richter, with Simon Cadell, Clifford Rose, Bernard Horsfall and Richard Heffer, plus Anthony Head in his first TV role. The two runs of this series were graced by a haunting Wilfred Josephs theme tune, subsequently released as a 45rpm single. The Gentle Touch 1982 Jill Gascoine starred as D. I. Maggie Forbes in this Friday night police drama. Possibly because LWT's other cop show of the time, The Professionals, was made entirely on location on film and swallowed the action budget, The Gentle Touch was slow-paced and intended to show an officer's domestic life. Furthermore, since Gascoine couldn't drive, Maggie never participated in a car chase and was always seen at the wheel of stationary vehicles! This example is from the final series in 1982.

The titles and theme tune are cool and gutsy, and there's a memorable shot of Gascoine's gruff co-star William Marlowe smashing a hole in a window to glare through it. Manhunt 1970 It's 1942 and RAF fighter pilot Jimmy Porter (Alfred Lynch) has been shot down over France. He soon finds himself on the run from the Nazis (played icily by Philip Madoc and Robert Hardy) in the company of a British agent Vincent (Peter Barkworth) and resistance fighter Nina (Cyd Hayman) who knows vital information about the movement in France. It is an elaborate production, but to modern eyes the use of OB video as a shooting format makes it look cheap, even though it would have been ground-breaking in its time. The title sequence makes great use of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and it is all very stirring stuff. Mapp and Lucia 1985 An hilarious adaptation of E.F.Benson's novels, made by LWT for Channel Four in 1985 and 1986 as two series of 5x50mins.

The episodes are quite simply SUPERB, boasting definitive performances by Geraldine McEwan, Nigel Hawthorne and Prunella Scales. Directed by Donald McWhinnie, they are a heady mix of OB video and multi-camera studio interiors. The music is quite brilliant. The rostrum work in the artwork title sequence is perhaps a little wobbly but the heart-warming music more than makes up for it. Mitch 1982 John Thaw starred in this cop drama, which was blessed with fey title music and chic police procedural animation, all graph paper and typewriters. Made in 1982, the series remained on the shelf until transmission from 31/08/1984. The second clip comprises an ITV Autumn launch trailer from that year. Notice its use of the standard ITV logo, which remained in use until 1989's corporate identity launch. The Professionals 1977 Another crime series, this one devised by those Avengers maestros Albert Fennell and Brian Clemens. They had intended the stars to be Clive Revill, Anthony Andrews and Jon Finch.

Then Gordon Jackson became available, Finch dropped out to be replaced by Martin Shaw as Doyle, causing the similar-looking Andrews to be dropped in favour of Lewis Collins as Bodie. Rough and macho, but without the sophistication of Thames TV's The Sweeney, this series finally ended in 1983. An honourable mention for the theme tune by Laurie Johnson: it is superb! The Talking Head 1968 This famous early play by Jim Allen starred Michael Craig and Edwin Richfield, but an impressive performance by John Thaw is its centrepiece. He plays a young TV script-writer who becomes totally dissatisfied with his lot. In a very memorable scene he lets rip in front of the studio crew of his own police drama, and what he has to say about people who work in television seems especially pertinent in this day and age... Upstairs Downstairs 1971-1974 (Sagitta Productions) Jean Marsh and Eileen Atkins devised this series, the story of an affluent London family and their servants at 165 Eaton Square. Marsh also took the rï¿½le of house maid Rose.

The show was initially disliked by LWT executives, who would have shelved it had there been no other finished programmes available to fill the schedule. However, the show became an instant hit with viewers and a massive worldwide success, running to 68 episodes. As butler Hudson and housekeeper Mrs Bridges, Gordon Jackson and Angela Baddeley were the stars, with David Langton and Rachel Gurney as their employers, the Bellamys. Another notable cast member of series one was Pauline Collins, joining the household 'on trial' as a maid in the first episode. Upstairs Downstairs 1971 & 1974 (Sagitta Productions) A technicians' strike which affected the whole ITV network in 1971 caused the first six episodes to be recorded in monochrome. As the series achieved success, episode one was remounted in colour and given a new ending that would enable it to match in with later episodes. However the budget did not permit a remount of the other five, which exist today only in their original b/w form.

Our second clip shows one of the many versions of the theme tune recorded by composer Alexander Faris, a sedate waltz to contrast with the more jaunty theme song, What are we going to do with Uncle Albert? Why Didn't They Ask Evans? 1980 The first British TV foray into Agatha Christie territory since an occasional BBC play series of the 1940s. LWT had initially wanted to produce a Miss Marple story, but this clashed with a movie production of The Mirror Crack'd and so Christie's 1934 novel 'Why Didn't They Ask Evans?' was chosen for adaptation instead. James Warwick and Francesca Annis played amateur investigators Bobby Jones and Lady Frances Derwent, alongside guest stars of the calibre of Eric Porter and Sir John Gielgud. Critics feel that the production owes more to LWT's own period dramas like Upstairs Downstairs than to Christie. Within These Walls 1975 This intense series of hour-long dramas ran for two years, and starred Googie Withers as Faye Boswell, governor of Stone Park Women's Prison. Her attitude matched her hair-do: firm and fair!

Critics scoffed at the idea of a "glamorous granny" governor, but Withers did her research, visiting HMP Holloway and other institutions, where she found all the governors well groomed. The haunting theme tune is by Denis King. Within These Walls was a big hit in Australia, where it inspired Prisoner, Cell Block H. This clip is from series two's second episode, 17/01/1975. LWT Children's Programmes The Adventures of Black Beauty 1972 (London Weekend International) The original TV adaptation of the classic novel by Anna Sewell, developed by Ted Willis. Judi Bowker (later Stacy Dorning), William Lucas, Charlotte Mitchell and Roderick Shaw starred. In total 52 episodes were produced across 2 series. Catweazle 1970 (London Weekend International) Hapless eleventh-century magician Catweazle transports himself and his toad Touchwood into our time. Chaos ensues when he applies his medieval outlook to twentieth century.

Geoffrey Bayldon is just brilliant in the title rï¿½le, the one he chose after turning down the BBC's invitation to succeed Patrick Troughton as Doctor Who. The series was created by Richard Carpenter, also responsible for The Ghosts of Motley Hall (Granada) and Robin of Sherwood (HTV). The first series ran from 15/02/1970 to 10/05/70 and saw Catweazle befriending young Carrot (Robin Davies), whose father (Charles Tingwell) ran a farm. Both the music and titles animation are gorgeous, showing us Catweazle falling through time. Catweazle 1971 (London Weekend International) It's a change of scene for Catweazle when he transports himself back to the 1970s in series two (tx 10/01/1971 to 04/04/71). He arrives in the grounds of a large mansion, home to young Cedric (Gary Warren) and his parents, where the magician adopts an abandoned railway station as his home.

In a truly poignant series finale, Catweazle manages to return home for good, floating into a sunset in a hot air balloon. Just William 1975 The BBC has taken three shots at Richmal Crompton's story over the years, and ITV had a bash in 1956 as well, but this 1975 production appears to be the most popular, arguably because of Bonnie Langford's performance as Violet Elizabeth Bott and her lisping catchphrase, "I'll thcweam and thcweam until I'm sick!" The titles credit both Pat Gavin and Terry Griffiths with graphic design; one imagines that Griffiths created the animation of William crashing through the LWT ident, before Gavin took over for the remainder of the sequence, but I'm prepared to be corrected on this hunch! (tx 06/02/1977-22/01/1978, two series & a special) Terrahawks 1983 (LWT/Anderson-Burr) Latter-day Gerry Anderson science-fiction puppet series.

The Terrahawks are led by Dr 'Tiger' Ninestein who is assisted by Mary Falconer, Hiro, Hawkeye, Kate Kestrel and the robot Zeroids. Together they battle against the hideous Zelda who is bent on destroying all humanoid life in the galaxy. The inventive title sequence animation was created by Kevin Davies, who had previously assisted Rod Lord in generating the book sequences in the BBC's Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Drama Drama by • Drama , TV Shows - 1990s 1 9 9 1 - 1 9 9 3 (USA) 33 x 30 minute episodes Nostalgic, funny, sad, and entertaining, Brooklyn Bridge was like a Jewish version of The Wonder Years.

Set in the Bensonhurst neighbourhood of Brooklyn in the 1950s, the series starred Marion Ross (Mrs Cunningham from Happy Days) as the matriarch, Sophie Berger, and told the story(...) by • Drama , TV Shows - 1990s 1 9 9 7 - 1 9 9 8 (USA) 22 x 60 minute episodes This police drama premiered with an episode in which the streets of Brooklyn became a war zone when a shooting spree occurred, in which both civilians and police were killed. The gunman was apprehended but then died while in police custody,(...) by • Drama , TV Shows - 1980s , TV Shows - 1990s 1 9 8 2 - 2 0 0 3 (UK) Brookside exploded onto British TV screens on 2 November 1982 - the day that the new network, Channel 4, began transmission. The resulting blast changed British soap opera forever. Phil Redmond (creator of Grange Hill) was the man behind Brookside.

Shunning Coronation Street techniques, forgetting studios and plywood houses Redmond bought a(...) by • Drama , TV Shows - 1970s 1 9 7 2 - 1 9 7 6 (UK) It was the BBC's The Brothers - about the three sons, widow and former mistress of the late owner of a road haulage firm - which put feuding-family sagas on the television map. When 70-year old Robert Hammond died, his eldest son Ted braced himself to take over(...) by • Drama , TV Shows - 1950s 1 9 5 6 - 1 9 5 7 (UK) 39 x 30 minute episodes This ITV pirate action-adventure series starring Robert Shaw as Dan Tempest - a swashbuckling, ex-pirate Captain - was a Weinstein Production for Sapphire Films Ltd.

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Jackson(...) by • Drama , TV Shows - 1990s 1 9 9 4 - 1 9 9 8 (UK) 12 x 90 minute episodes Adapted from, or based on, the novels by Ellis Peters (pseudonym of the late Edith Pargeter), Cadfael featured Brother Cadfael, a Benedictine monk living in Shrewsbury's St Peter and St Paul Abbey during the reign of King Stephen. His first television outing came in(...) by • Drama , TV Shows - 1960s 1 9 6 8 (UK) 6 x 60 minute episodes Pre-dating the celebrated I, Claudius by eight years, this series of six plays from Granada, based on the lives of the Emperors of Rome, aired in September and October 1968. The Caesars was written and produced by Granada's Head of Drama, Philip Mackie and directed by Derek Bennett.

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Question: Who played the part of 'Budgie' in the 1971/72 ITV drama series?
Answer: Adam Faith